Despite those omissions, which any true Man-Thing fan should have anyway, this is one good-looking volume, and, as hoped, the printing in this book does vastly improve the readability of these stories. I don’t mean the stories are suddenly better, but rather it’s physically easier to read, with the paper nice and bright and the occasional text piece, and the occasional white lettering on a black background text piece, are now far more legible.

There’s the other side of this, where, as I noted in my look at the Don Newton Batman book, actually seeing the artwork on white paper is something I’ll have to get accustomed to after reading them for decades on brown paper that’s getting browner.

Anyway, if I had a choice I’d have preferred the omnibus with the Frank Brunner cover, but at $40, I’m not complaining. And because I always have to know, here’s what’s under the dustjacket:

In addition to the stories, there are reproductions of trade paperback covers and such, as so:

…And there’s at least one table of contents illo from Monsters Unleased that sort of distractingly blacks out said table of contents:

…but, you know, whatever.

In case you’re wondering, the back-ups from the Giant-Size issues, including the Howard the Duck shorts, are not reprinted. Starring Man-Thing Only in this book, friends.

So I’m going to throw one of these things, here..yeah, it says like $100 or so, but if you click on it, you should see other offers in the $40 range. I mean, you know, if you feel like clickin’ an’ all:

Buy enough of these, maybe we’ll get that second volume collecting all the other Man-Thing stories. I mean, I just need one copy for me, Marvel doesn’t really need to print a whole lot of them.

Smichal – that’s not in there, either, but it’s one of the later M-T stories so that wasn’t as obvious an omission as the missing comics that were within the ’70s/early ’80s timeline represented in this volume.

I would certainly enjoy seeing that Man-Thing serial from Marvel Comic Presents by Steve Gerber & Tom Sutton receive the reprint treatment in the near future. It was such a wonderfully bizarre, grotesque story!